The Crocus Project: Developing cultural and creative tourism in rural areas

This article was written for Uncover magazine – From Global to Ground (10th edition). You can read the full magazine here. 

Authors: Greg Richards is (Emeritus) Professor of Placemaking and Events at Breda University of Applied Sciences and Professor of Leisure Studies at Tilburg University. Leontine Onderwater is a project manager in the Crocus Project. Both work with ATLAS.

Opportunities and challenges
Rural and Remote Areas of Europe have common challenges and opportunities. Firstly, demographics because populations are ageing and declining, with low density threatening long-term sustainability. Secondly, economic challenges for areas traditionally based on agriculture, forestry, and light industry, which are now increasingly turning towards services and tourism. Preserving tangible and intangible heritage as an asset for cultural and creative tourism development requires both resources and skills. Thirdly, tourism is crucial to rural economies, supporting local culture and traditions and enhancing quality of life, but needs to be sustainably developed. 

Crocus aims to increase rural resilience by encouraging cultural and creative tourism development and supporting new business models. The key challenges to be overcome include developing place-specific business models for different types of cultural heritage and community needs; supporting balanced and sustainable tourism development and developing policies for cooperation between rural and remote areas.

The Crocus Project aims to identify suitable Cultural and Creative Tourism (CCT) business models for different types of heritage and rural areas and create living labs to prototype sustainable CCT business models. It will also develop cross-border policy scenarios for the four EU macro-regions (Baltic Sea, Adriatic and Ionian, Alpine, and Danube); and create tools to support the development of sustainable and inclusive CCT in the future.

Activities
The Crocus Project is funded by the EU Horizon Programme, which has a research focus. The project first reviewed previous research to identify the major research themes and to assess research gaps. 

The literature review found strong growth in research on rural CCT (Richards et al., 2025). Gastronomy, events, and festivals are important in shaping rural  experiences. Although there is an emphasis on authenticity and nostalgia, innovations such as albergo diffuso (or scattered accommodation facilities with centralised facilities), and cultural routes are also stimulating change.

Intangible heritage research has grown significantly, largely because of the enhanced profile of the UNESCO Intangible Heritage List. This has also stimulated more attention for rural heritage and contemporary rural lifestyles. However, the ‘local’ lifestyles underpinning rural culture are threatened by population changes. Rural areas are diversifying, with growing numbers of lifestyle entrepreneurs, retirees, and digital nomads becoming new ‘locals’. New productive activities are needed to link heritage and tradition with new ‘incomers’, develop creative hubs to stimulate innovation, as shown in the Brabant Kust de Kempen case below.  

After the literature review, resident and visitor surveys were undertaken, as well as a Delphi Study, aiming to identify the main policy challenges in rural CCT. The Delphi study indicated that cultural events and festivals, local food and gastronomy (including wineries) and contacts with locals are the most important elements of CCT in rural areas. However, cultural traditions and practices and UNESCO World Heritage Sites were also considered crucial. Storytelling and oral history as well as local crafts were seen as slightly less important.

Research conducted by Crocus partners in eight Cross Border Living Labs also indicated that local inclusion, or re-grounding was a key success factor in cross-border collaboration. This means working with local communities to ensure that the actions developed meet their needs. The importance of sufficient levels of financial support and infrastructure development (the resources element of placemaking), and skill enhancement (creativity) were identified as potential bottlenecks in cultural and creative tourism development in rural and remote areas. Policy-makers need to provide sufficient support for local placemaking activities to ensure tourism developments are contextually relevant and locally impactful.

Case studies of cross-border cultural tourism
A number of case studies were developed by the project to highlight cross-border cultural tourism development. The ATLAS team focused on cross-border cultural routes, including the Roman Limes, De Groote Heide and Brabant Kust De Kempen. 

The Limes route follows the border of the Roman Empire across Europe from Hadrian’s wall in the UK to the Black Sea in Romania. It crosses the Netherlands from Katwijk on the North Sea to Berg en Dal on the German border. This represents a ‘relict border’ which introduces visitors to Roman history. De Groote Heide is a nature area that stretches across the Dutch-Belgian border from south of Eindhoven to Pelt in Belgium. Brabant Kust De Kempen is a cross-border project developing a cultural route along Bels Lijntje, an old railway line between Tilburg and Turnhout.

A common challenge faced by all of these rural border routes is the lack of tangible cultural heritage attractions that can be visited. There is a need to develop new attractions based on intangible heritage, which in many cases is done through interpretation and storytelling. The Roman Limes route takes a more traditional approach to interpretation, which is probably not surprising given the archaeological base of the route. 

In Brabant Kust De Kempen storytelling played an important role, because BUas was one of the partners. Professor Moniek Hover and her team developed storylines related to the history of the area and the idea of the ‘border feeling’ found in these peripheral regions. This has supported the development of cultural routes, including a smugglers route, and a cross-border tourism information centre. These developments are supported by three storylines: Industrialisation, Vagrancy and Poverty and War, and Espionage, all related to the border (Brabant Kust de Kempen, 2025). These themes emphasise the role of the border in stimulating and inhibiting development and creating links between countries. 

Our research showed that cross-border collaboration is challenging because of the differences in culture, language and administrative arrangements between EU member states. However, both Brabant Kust de Kempen and De Groote Heide have effectively utilised cross-border governance. In De Groote Heide a Benelux Groepering voor Territoriale Samenwerking  (Benelux Grouping for Regional Collaboration (BGTS)) provides the framework for regular cross-border meetings and a common budget for tourism development. 

There is still no standardised means of developing cross-border collaboration, although plans are advancing for the creation of a cross-border association framework. Cross-border projects seem to work better at local level. There is much more active collaboration when actors close to the border are involved and have control over activities and resources. In more top-down projects, such as the Roman Limes, national actors tend to work on their own tourism resources, rather than collaborate across the border (Richards and Onderwater, forthcoming). 

Towards place-based cultural tourism development
A key insight from the review was the growing focus on intangible heritage in RRA. Unlike urban areas with abundant tangible cultural landmarks, rural regions rely on intangible resources—such as storytelling, local gastronomy, and traditional crafts—to attract tourists. This reflects the increasing importance of preserving and leveraging intangible cultural assets for sustainable tourism development. However, intangible cultural heritage needs to be made visible and accessible for tourists. One potential avenue is to combine placemaking strategies, which emphasises giving meaning to local resources, with ‘placeshaping’ principles (Horlings, 2016) including:
• Re-positioning: Reimagining how cultural assets are presented.
• Re-appreciation: Encouraging fresh perspectives on local heritage.
• Re-grounding: Strengthening the connection between communities and their cultural assets.

Acknowledgements
The research reported here was financed through a European Commission Project  101132454 — CROCUS — HORIZON-CL2-2023-HERITAGE-01

Sources
Brabant Kust de Kempen (2025). Verhalend Concept: Beschrijving Werkpakket 4 – grensverhalen.

Crocus (2025). Cross-border cultural and creative tourism in rural and remote areas. https://crocuseurope.eu

Horlings, L.G. (2016). Connecting people to place: sustainable place-shaping practices as transformative power. Current opinion in environmental sustainability, 20, 32-40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2016.05.003

Richards, G. (2020). Designing creative places: The role of creative tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 85, 102922. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2020.102922

Richards, G., James, L. & Halkier, H. (2025). Concepts and methods in cultural and creative tourism in rural and remote areas. Crocus Project Deliverable D2.1. Aalborg University, Aalborg.

Richards, G. & Onderwater, L. (forthcoming). Developing cross-border cultural tourism: Top-down vs bottom-up governance approaches. Tourism Geographies.